


if you wait

by Clo



Series: the wasteland [2]
Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8470888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clo/pseuds/Clo
Summary: Andy was happy when Roger found him three years after the world ended, but he's not convinced there's any reason to be road-tripping across Europe in a post-apocalyptic winter.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clayisforgirls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clayisforgirls/gifts).



> The note at the beginning of 'loneliness (when you were away)' explains why this is here (although this one is edited, hurrah) and the backstory if you feel the need for it - this is set in the same 'verse, after that one, although this shouldn't need the backstory or the first fic to make sense if you're just in it for the NovAndy. The world ended, it's pretty much as miserable as you'd imagine, and Andy could really use a hug about now; you're up to speed.
> 
> This was originally written as a gift for clayisforgirls - oh so long ago now, wow, but never posted anywhere as far as I remember. The apocalypse is set around early 2007 (not 2009 as I misremembered it on the last fic) so no weddings, no baby Federers and Andy was just tapping on the door to make the tennis top ten. Basic warnings for typical post-apocalyptic scenario, with more specific spoilery warnings in the end notes.

* * *

 

_(Approximately, maybe) February 14th 2010, somewhere in the fucking snow of post-apocalypse Europe_

 

“Seriously, Roger,” Andy says as he swings back into the car with what he hopes is an uncomfortable blast of cold air and scatter of snow all over the Swiss, shaking out his dripping hair. “I know for a fact that you get a bitch of a winter in Switzerland so I'm pretty sure you’ve noticed that there's better months for a road-trip than February. June maybe. August – you know what, pretty much _any_ _month_. You remember summer right? That thing where we’d be crunching along on lovely potholed roads instead of tunnelling through snow banks?”

From the driver's seat Roger grins over at him, all easy amusement as if Andy’s tone hadn’t been sharp enough to cut. Which is understandable when not a single curl of _Roger’s_ hair is wet and, although the heating is down low – heat costs fuel, another reason a winter road trip is monumentally stupid with petrol down to the dregs and going staler by the day – he's down to just two layers, bright-red knit scarf tumbled carelessly in his lap and grey fleece unzipped (there’s still an odd moment of disconnect every time Andy sees it, though it'd taken him the best part of yesterday to realise he’d subconsciously been looking for absent _RF_ branding).

He doesn't look at all put out that Andy's just covered him in snow, or even glance at the flakes melting in a starscape of glittering ice across his fleece. Instead he reaches a casual hand over to ruffle the scruff of hair Andy keeps meaning to cut. Snow scatters across Andy’s jeans, vanishing as it hits clinging-damp denim and he jerks away.

“Knock it off!” It comes out only half-heartedly annoyed, flush rising across his cheeks and he turns to yank the door closed to cover it, gritting his teeth.

So okay – he'd agreed to this inexplicable trip against all his better judgement because _Roger_ asked, because they'd be stuck in a car together for some undefined length of time and that would’ve been an appealing thought, once. Still marvels inwardly that the Swiss is alive, that Roger had come looking for _him,_ because before that it'd been a lonely three years of scraping survival from the dust.

Three years of searching long-ago-looted stores for stray tins and creeping through markets with roofs creaking a symphony of protest overhead, certain he was about to be flattened by beams and slates at any moment. The constant ache of hunger beneath the sharp definition of his ribs. Of waking up with a stranger’s hand down his jeans in a squat in the shadow of Montmartre, the blinding jerk of panic before he kicked the guy away and ran, half-asleep beneath the adrenaline and leaving behind everything he’d saved; Jamie’s penknife (useful) and a tennis ball from his last match (useless), his journal with a year’s worth of observations in tiny, careful penmanship to make the most of the precious paper (essential for keeping himself from going utterly crackers and the one thing that forced him back later when his heart finally stopped racing, only to find the squat abandoned and cold grey ashes in the fireplace, scraps of paper covered in tiny, careful letters that fell apart beneath his trembling hands).

There’s not much that could last through that, three years of the grinding weight of misery and surviving on sheer stubbornness. So he tells himself that the awkward little crush he'd once had on Roger, just a background reflexive want against other things he wanted, real tangible things, is nothing now – naïve junior fantasy that he'd probably have long outgrown even without, you know, all the end of the world business.

But he'd thought _maybe._ Despite the palpable tension Roger had going on with Marat back at the house or maybe because of it… he’d thought maybe this could go some place comforting. That didn’t seem too much to hope for, even with his optimism revised down to ground level over the last three years. After all, it was Roger who'd come to him and said _road-trip, we'll take_ _that_ _four-by-four_ _you scavenged from the motor museum in Stockholm,_ _I have something to show you_ and it wasn't like Andy had a career or a better place to be any more so he'd not hesitated before he said _sure, whatever_.

And then last night they'd found an old farmhouse to spend the night, weathered stones listing comfortably into the hill that kept it from the worst of the snow and the windows cracked but intact so the weather hadn't invaded. What used to be the kitchen – tarnished copper pans hung from the walls and kept company by bunches of brittle spices too old to be any use, everything thick with dust – had an inglenook fireplace and they’d sat in it to eat their military-grade boil-in-the-bag dinner, yellow glow from the open hearth flickering over Roger's face as he laughed at Andy giving minus-Michelin star ratings to the dehydrated mush. The warm light hid the decay of the room with shadows and softened the lines of their frowns as they shared their worst restaurant experience on tour, back when restaurants were still a thing (Andy conceded that one graciously, gratefully, after Roger related being offered crispy-fried scorpions as an _entrée_ in Beijing and having to eat one to avert a diplomatic incident.)

The warmth from the fire had pooled around them, soaking the ice from Andy’s bones from the first time all day and all his tension unwinding, leaned back with a hundred years of stone rough through his t-shirt and waited for Roger to make the move he expected. To do what he thought this trip was _for._

Which hey, was fine by him. Andy's a realist and the world's in fucking tatters; it's not as if sex with someone he likes – trusts – is his for the asking these days and he feels his skin itch sometimes with the need to be touched, reaffirmed in the lines of his body that remembers massages, the daily skim of a physio’s hands. If Roger wanted to use him as a booty call because Marat's too busy twitching every time Gaston so much as sniffs to notice that Roger follows him around like a lost puppy, well. Andy'll take booty call over nothing and be grateful.

Only, with the fire fading and evening drifted into pitch black through the dirty windows, Roger had stretched, rocked to his feet and just as Andy was about to reach out, do- something, said ‘ _I’ll_ _take first watch’._ Turned to go before Andy could form a response, smile flashed over his shoulder and vanishing into the shadows by the door while Andy stared blankly after him and wondered what the hell just happened.

So – apparently the trip wasn’t some sort of opportunity for some mutual comfort out in the wilds of winter Europe but it's been a long day of driving already, interspersed with frequent stops to dig the car out when the snow gets too deep but Roger insists every time that they keep going, that they have somewhere to be, it'll be worth it and Andy's yet to come up with a replacement hypothesis. If Roger's not dragging him out here, over roads that are invisible wherever there's snow, are potholed all to hell where there isn't, for the chance to fuck away from the claustrophobic tension that’s all that’s holding up the half-derelict house they’re sharing, then Andy's at a loss. No other reason to be out here that he can see and frankly, they're getting close to the point where they don't have enough fuel supplies for the return trip so he's going to need an explanation before he continues to risk freezing to death.

Oh, and blushing whenever Roger touches him isn't helping. It's just- it’s been so long since _anyone_ he likes has touched Andy in a friendly way (he tries to forget that for most of the time before Roger found him, that could include plain touched at all; he wasn’t a people person before and having the total global population cut down to less than half hadn’t exactly improved his social skills) but... yeah. It's been a while.

He takes a deep breath before he turns to look back at the Swiss, scrubbing his glove over his face on the pretence of wiping away snow.

“So,” he says, half-muffled into his palm. “How about next time we get stuck we just turn back, huh? Because honestly I'm starting to think you don't know where we're going and I don't want to end up in Russia in fucking February, Roger.”

“We're not going to Russia,” Roger says, with exactly the degree of smug that doesn't quite make Andy want to punch him, but makes him think seriously of collecting snowballs to shove down the Swiss' neck when he isn't expecting it. “And we will be there before dark, I think.”

“You _think?_ Jesus.”

“No, I think he lives further than we have fuel for.” Roger's smile is still unexpectedly sweet, teasing, lighting up his face exactly as Andy remembers from tennis matches and practices, parties and tournament events that feel like another life, now. Wimbledon had been fast-vanishing beneath a storm of snow and ice when he last saw it, green lost somewhere under the havoc trailing the change in climate and he wonders sometimes if the trophy is still in the museum, buried six-foot-of-snow deep but still glittering and flawless in its glass case, sitting beneath pictures of the man who sits next to him, smiling the same smile.

Suddenly it's hard just looking at Roger and Andy glances away, out at the uneven roll of white hills in the distance and snow-covered fields scribbled across by overgrown hedges. It’s nothing familiar or rather, nothing he could pick out from a thousand other landscapes he’s seen; they could be anywhere in Europe. He's completely lost.

A hand touches his arm, hesitant.

“Andy, trust me,” Roger says softly. “I have no intention of us freezing to death. Just a little longer?”

Andy stares out at the endless sky the colour of dirty porcelain and ground almost the same shade, with the promise of more snow in the low, heavy clouds. It's not as if anywhere else is home now, he supposes, and a Roger Federer who survived the apocalypse and pulled himself up again from nothing isn't going to drive out into the middle of nowhere without a plan.

Reaching out, he wraps his cold fingers around Roger's warm ones and squeezes, gentle because Roger's never explained the spiderweb of scars across his hands or if they hurt; Andy doesn't want to ruin the moment by holding too tight.

“A little longer,” he agrees and glances over at Roger's smile that's gone uncertain, tweaked down at the corners. “But if you've dragged me all this way to see Jesus, I'm going to be bloody disappointed.”

Roger's grinning as he starts the engine, easing the car away from the drift Andy had scraped them out of and back onto firmer road, flicking on the wipers as fresh snowflakes begin to drift down. Andy curls his legs up onto his seat and tucks his hands beneath his layers of clothes to warm them, wishing they didn't feel empty without another hand to hang onto.

Maybe when this trip is over he should finally admit defeat and adopt a stray dog – not one of the ones that roam feral in packs but the former pets, the ones who scrape around the fossilising rubbish heaps in every city. They stared at people with wary, starving eyes that echoed how he feels most of the time and sometimes they’d creep close if he paused for long enough, pretending wariness even as every bone-thin line of them begged for affection.

It’s a bit pathetic befriending a dog because they’re easier than people, but he’d liked them- before. At least if he saves one from starving, the apocalypse won’t be a total write-off.

The falling snow gets thicker over the next hour as the sun sets somewhere behind the clouds, diffuse light softening to grey twilight around the white flakes picked out on their headlights. They pass a former town, murky and indistinct shapes of ruined buildings, lifeless, but Roger hums a pleased sound as they pass a crooked signpost five minutes later, sign itself lost somewhere with the post half-bent at an angle but it clearly means something to the Swiss because he slows the car to a crawl, peering through the snow.

Andy looks too but he can barely make out trees bowed under the snow-weight and his “What are-” gets a shake of Roger's head. Flopping back in his seat, he gives up with a sigh. Apparently he's going to find out where they're going when they get there and not a second before.

Except, that looks like it might take a while because as they make a slow, slow left turn onto a barely-visible track through the shadowy trees, there's a clang and a jolt and Andy's abruptly glad he'd bothered with the seatbelt as he's jerked back into his seat. Beneath them, the car makes a last spluttering protest and stalls.

“For _fuckssake_ Roger,” Andy says into the abrupt silence, exasperated even as he thumbs the belt loose and opens the door, “is there a rock in Europe that you _haven't_ hit on this trip?”

He loses Roger's short (and no-doubt uncomplimentary) answer to the blast of ice that catches him in the face as he slides out the car, boots hitting the snow and immediately disappearing up to his knees so he stumbles when he drags them a step forward. It's almost-dark, only the soft yellow of the headlights illuminating the thickly falling snow that patters on the trees, the soft, constant whisper of it the only sound. It's going to be hell digging the car out in this, cold cutting through his layers of thermals even as he fumbles to get his jacket zipped, cursing softly at cold-clumsy fingers. Gloves, gloves – they'd been on his lap and he leans down, squinting against the snow that's collecting on his eyelashes to see where he'd dropped them, fuck.

One's easy enough, dark blue fleece just visible lying on the snow beside the deep hole of his first footprint. As he's picking it up, the other one is waved underneath his nose only to be yanked teasingly away when he reaches for it.

“Roger,” he starts with a sigh, straightening up from his crouch slowly because his back is a solid ache from sitting and digging for two damn days, “do you want me to dig the sodding car or-”

“What?” demands Roger, still sharp with irritation. From the car behind him, where the Swiss is just unbuckling his seatbelt in the driver's seat and Andy hears him say “Andy?” again, faintly, but he's stopped listening, all his attention snapped to the person in front of him who's older than the picture in his head, a scar cutting a puffy red line jaggedly across one cheek that’s all new but the slow flicker of smile just the same. Voice lost somewhere in the shock holding him frozen, all Andy can do is stare blankly because, oh. _Oh._

In the soft glow from the headlights, Djordje Djokovic's smile widens past surprise, into something echoing a grin with a gleam of excitement in hazel eyes, eyes so familiar that Andy's chest goes tight at the memory.

 _Please_ he thinks. Wonders if he's said it out loud but he can't remember how to speak; it feels like he's numb all over from more than just the cold, back pressed to the chilled side of the car for support. _Please let this- is this why- please._

Slowly, as if Andy might startle like a deer and he's trying not to scare him away, Djordje lifts a hand palm-out. In clearer English than Andy remembers him ever managing before the world ended, he says, “ _Stay_.”

As if commanding a _dog_ and Andy's got a protest half-out on autopilot before Djordje steps back, still grinning as he disappears into the dark. Andy makes an involuntary half-leap after him, almost falling as the snow catches around his feet and he's shaking, fuck, but he wants to yell _come back_ , wants to ask the question that's lighting him up with hope and he'd chase after Djordje if someone didn't grab his shoulder to hold him still.

“Wait, Andy,” Roger says before Andy can pull free, go stumbling after Djordje in the dark. “We're almost at the hotel. He won't be long.”

“What hotel? Do you know who that- is he- is that why-” The questions can't come out fast enough, tumbling out incoherent and Andy bites his lip, looking after Djordje because he's afraid of what answers he might see on Roger's face. His teeth chatter, he's shaking so hard and Roger pulls him into a half-hug with his arm tight around Andy's shoulders, holding him up.

“Do you think I'd drive you all the way to Serbia in, as you say, fucking February, for any other reason?” he says all soft amusement, breath brushing warm across Andy's ear and the curve of his smile against Andy's cheek, almost a kiss and Andy's amazed to think that a day go, an _hour_ ago, this would've been all he wanted. “I found him last summer, or he found me I guess. I never found the right moment-”

“Now is a good moment.” Andy's voice cracks, because he's almost sure but if he's assuming wrong, if it's not- he doesn't think he could keep breathing through the disappointment. “Tell me. You have to say it.”

Roger takes a breath but whatever he's about to say is interrupted, by an irritated, loud and _familiar_ voice from behind them, demanding, “Roger, did you forget I tell you we dug ditch across the road? Because I am almost sure you used to be less stupid than this and also whoever that is they should know better than to let you drive, you are a menace. Who-”

Andy's turning before the voice cuts off, pulling away from Roger to squint into the dark where he can just make out a person beneath the trees, details tantalisingly lost in the dark.

“It's Andy,” he says, makes it through without his voice shaking somehow. “You're about as polite as I remember. By which I mean, not at all.”

Aching, horrible moment where he thinks he's got it wrong, maybe-

And then the shadow moves, faster than Andy would’ve thought possible through the thick snow, almost sprinting and Andy gets just a blur, dark hair and flushed cheeks and-

-and Novak hits him with both feet off the ground, slamming Andy back against the car with a thud that Andy barely feels because Novak's wrapped around him with legs and arms and his mouth hot across Andy's chin before he finds Andy's lips, shuddery breath caught in the kiss that's wet and too-hard and is better than any kiss, any-fucking-thing, in Andy's life up until this point. He's got an arm around Novak, holding him tight and his other hand fumbles under the Serb's jacket, pushes layers aside to find skin that burns his cold fingers with the heat, digs his nails in desperate to assure himself this is real and Novak gasps against his mouth, half-laughing even though Andy can feel the heat of tears sliding down his cheeks, they're so close.

“I will kill Djordje,” Novak says, so muffled against Andy's mouth, thick with tears, that it takes him a second to decipher it. “He say Roger is here and I walk, I walk when I should've run and it's you, how is you? I looked. I _looked,_ Andy,” and it's almost plaintive, breath hiccuping. “I thought-”

“Yeah, me too.” Andy has to interrupt because he can't hear it said, not when he'd thought the same because the BBC coverage had lasted just long enough to show south-eastern Europe disintegrating into a smoking ruin and he'd known Novak went home, he'd _known_ and even as he ran, the ache in his chest followed him from London, across the Channel and he'd thought time had buried it deep enough but the relief making his knees go weak says that he's just been pretending. Three fucking years and he hadn't known, he'd just _assumed_ -

Can't hold them both up any more, dropping them into a foot of snow and it breaks the kiss, although Novak keeps his hands fisted in Andy's jacket as he leans back enough for Andy to get a good look at him, the first in too-long. There's snow in his neatly-short hair, on his eyelashes, on- on the black eyepatch that covers his left eye. Something twists painfully in Andy's chest as he reaches out with cold-numb fingers to cup Novak's face, stroke a thumb across the elastic holding it on.

“What happened?”

“What? Oh!” A grin lights up Novak's face through the tears and he reaches up, careless, yanks the eyepatch away to show-

\- a hazel eye, perfect twin to the right one with tears starring the dark lashes together and Andy can't even form the question, mouth half-open as he stares.

Novak just shrugs, exactly as he’d done since juniors after a prank. Usually on Andy, and Andy can't believe he's here, sitting in the snow in a Serbian February with the man he thought he'd never see again and who is such a fucking _child,_ god, Andy wants to kiss him and bury him in snow and demand an explanation all at once.

Thankfully, Novak makes the decision for him by never knowing when to shut up, waving the useless eyepatch gleefully.

“Djordje say I do not look threatening enough for a bandit so I find this. Not that we need threatening because we mostly steal from warehouses you know, empty places and there's lots of us at the hotel for the winter so it is safe with lots of food and you will like it, it is how do you say, old worldly? In summer we travel, that is how I find Roger and sometimes he ask me to find things for him because I'm good at-”

“Novak,” Andy says and when Novak pauses, looking at him with the exact same inquiring expression he's used since he was twelve, so familiar that Andy couldn't care less that he's shivering, that they're both probably going to get fucking frostbite, because it's _Novak_ and the empty ache in his chest isn't there for the first time in years, replaced with something bubbly and hot and tight that he doesn't even have words for, “shut up so I can kiss you some more alright?”

Novak doesn't wait; he's leaning forward even as he says “Yes, definitely-” and Andy threads their cold fingers together as his mouth finds Novak's warmth again, hanging on as tight as he can.

In a minute they'll have to move before they freeze, follow Djordje and Roger and he'll have to hug Djordje and Roger for doing this without telling him for all this time, the kind-hearted bastard, and ask about the rest of Novak's family - which will mean talking about Jamie and his mum, something that always hollows out his chest with the aching grief of uncertainty but he thinks it might be easier with Novak there to lean against, solid and tactile against his side. Everything is waiting, everything they need to do, now.

But for a moment it's just the snow and the silence, and Novak Djokovic, laughing against his kiss at the end of the world. And it's enough.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: mentions of hunger bordering starvation, visible scars from past trauma, a mention of a brief non-con grope while Andy was asleep, implied specific background character death (or at least uncertain disappearance), and general bleakness.


End file.
